Hans Küng on the need for the Pope to stop to refuse stubbornly to reconsider the issue of celibacy for priests:
Why does the pope continue to assert that what he calls "holy" celibacy is a "precious gift", thus ignoring the biblical teaching that explicitly permits and even encourages marriage for all office holders in the Church? Celibacy is not "holy"; it is not even "fortunate"; it is "unfortunate", for it excludes many perfectly good candidates from the priesthood and forces numerous priests out of their office, simply because they want to marry. The rule of celibacy is not a truth of faith, but a church law going back to the 11th Century; it should have been abolished already in the 16th Century, when it was trenchantly criticized by the Reformers.
Honesty demands that the pope, at the very least, promise to rethink this rule -- something the vast majority of the clergy and laity have wanted for a long time now.
My view on the question is that celibacy is just one of the symptoms of an archaic Catholic church, which believes fanatically and dangerously that inhumane traditions and rigidity are the only way to maintain its purity and its authenticity. Hans Küng ought to advise the Pope to let women be priests for that would revolutionize his church and send the message that Catholicism at last believes in equality and that women can communicate with God without any sexual tensions. Moreover, having women priests is a better way to address sex abuse than having married men as priests not because women don't abuse children, but because their inclusion would force the wall of silence to crumble and would make it a lot more difficult for the Catholic Church to believe that children and women are inferior to men and be ignored when they are abused by its members.
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